


Chapter Last

by free_smarcher



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse of verb tense shifts, Also he's in love not dead, Book: Hard in Hightown - Varric Tethras, Cassandra Pentaghast's Disgusted Noises, Cassandra and Varric friendship gives me life, Cole's knock knock jokes, Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hawke in the Fade, Hightown Funk Exchange, Mary Kirby ships it, Varric is sad for a part of this, Writerly Varric, and so is Hawke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 10:58:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 11,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17021403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/free_smarcher/pseuds/free_smarcher
Summary: Varric waits for Hawke and Thedas waits for a sequel.(Fortunately, Thedas is used to disappointment.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tetrahedron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tetrahedron/gifts).



> I have made liberal use of the free space prompt, which included a mention of Hard in Hightown. And then this happened. I went down a weird rabbit hole about whether or not there was a sequel to Hard in Hightown and now I have headcanons about Varric's bibliography. (I think Siege Harder was a tie-in novel, basically. I can post links to why I don't think there's an actual sequel to HiH if people want.) 
> 
> I should warn that a lot of this fic deals with Varric not quite getting what he wants, and he believes that Hawke is dead for a good part of it. 
> 
> (He is also a person with eyes, so he notices Lace Harding's pretty face once, and spends an entire sentence tottering on the edge of considering romancing Cassandra before hurling himself away from danger. This is absolutely a Hawke/Varric fic, though.)
> 
> Finally: the holiday season and work left me without enough time to edit and revise. I hope this is good for your brain and heart anyway!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some dialogue and one codex entry borrowed from canon.

“Know this: an unknown person, not of the Qunari, recently woke the Librarians…the Librarians facilitated learning before the fracture, before the fall. Now, beware them. They are unwell.” 

Varric followed the Inquisitor past the reddish glow of the spirit and through the ancient archway, into what was, or what had been, a library. 

Or a Library.  Capitalization seemed likely, in a place like the Crossroads.

The Seeker walked a few paces ahead of the Inquisitor, scanning for danger. Her posture was still relaxed but Varric had fought with her (in both senses) enough to know that her guard was up. The vague impression of a terrible hat flitted in and out of Varric’s peripheral vision, Cole keeping them safe in his way. Varric took the rear, one thumb hooked through his belt but the other hand free, ready to reach back for the crossbow in an instant.

“Now this is a story I know how to tell – Inquisitor Lavellan,” he began to narrate “staff at the ready and green hand glowing, barging into ancient mysteries in unbelievable places? High probability of demons? The Inquisitor’s astonishingly lethal – and attractive – companions at her side?” 

Lavellan chuckled. “Varric, I’m not an expert in modern literature, but isn’t this a bit formulaic? Even for you?” 

“I keep telling you, you have to give the people what they want. Besides, there’s still the Librarians to introduce. That’s original, right? ‘Beware the Librarians, for they are unwell’” he intoned. “No one will see that coming. Pah! Librarians!” 

By the time the party stepped down into the wide, open room with the twisty elvhen tree in the centre of it, he’d hit his stride and was bantering back and forth with Cassandra and the Kid like they would have during the last set of dark times. As a result, they were making more than enough noise to tick off the Librarians and had no trouble at all seeing the cluster of Fear demons coming. 

“Librarians!” shouted Lavellan. 

“Hello!” exclaimed Cole. 

“Not the time, Kid,” growled Varric, and then it was into the fray. 

 

The fight with the demons was a fight with some demons. It was neither the best nor the worst fight with demons that Varric had ever had, and Andraste’s holy hairpiece wasn’t  _ that  _ something. Lavellan was quick with a barrier and awesome with that stonefist thing she did, and Cole redefined ‘fast’ with his knives. Cass was fierce and stalwart in equal measure, tearing through demons like they’d just asked her to put on a dress, and Varric felt he did at least his fair share of blasting bad guys with crossbow bolts in the middle of performing flying somersaults.

He felt his knees grind after he landed the last one. He was tired, winded, and too old for this shit. 

“Let’s move on. I don’t want to rest until we’re somewhere a bit less exposed,” said Lavellan, gazing between the ruined stone pillars into the strangely bright exterior. “Is anyone hurt?” 

Moments later, they stepped into a mirror. 

 

The Viscount of Kirkwall had expected that going to Orlais for the Exalted Council would bring with it certain risks. For instance, he was sure there would be an excess of food and drink, ample religio-political posturing, a reunion with a hard-drinking Qunari mercenary and his somehow harder drinking company, and a prank or five from Sera. He didn’t warn Bran about the latter, which also meant that he also expected to spend some of his trip managing an irate seneschal. 

What Varric had not at all expected was to spend his time at the Council walking through magic mirrors in an ancient and timeless Library that wasn’t quite in the Fade, but wasn’t  _ not  _ in the Fade, either. Varric had been aware of Eluvians for a decade or more now, but until very recently they had seemed rare, extraordinary, and dangerous. Eluvians were rapidly losing their mystique as he walked through a new one roughly once an hour. 

It was the funniest feeling, stepping through an Eluvian. At first it was like tapping on a window, then like pressing into a cushion. In the moments between entering and exiting it Varric felt like nothing so much as a stone that had thrown itself into the sea. When he stepped out, he may have left the tiniest grains of himself behind. When he stepped out, he thought that if he looked quickly enough, he would see the waters of the Fade beading on the back of his hand.  

Placing his feet on the flat, solid stone of the next room in the Library was a relief. 

“This seems safe enough,” said the Seeker, coming back around a curved wall lined with bookshelves. 

Lavellan directed them all to rest for a short while. “Including you, Cassandra. Go find something new to read.” Cassandra grumbled slightly but browsed through the bookcases quietly until something caught her eye. She gasped aloud. 

“Inquisitor? I thought that this was a library of the ancient elves?” Cassandra was blushing as she held out a mid-sized tome with a soft leather cover. 

_ The Randy Dowager Quarterly: 9:27-9:29, volumes 37-48.  _

Oh, this was going to be good. 

“I, um, had not expected that there would be a romance section,” continued the Seeker, refusing to look in Varric’s general or specific direction. 

“The spirit, the Archivist – it mentioned that new knowledge sometimes comes to the Crossroads, since whatever made all of this” the Inquisitor motioned around the Library “happen. Perhaps the spirits enjoy  _ romance  _ and other newer genres.” 

Cassandra nodded once, as if approving of spirits that shared her tastes in literature. “We should look around again. There may be other valuable volumes lying about.” 

It was at this point that Varric could no longer contain his laughter. “Ha! Seeker, I know why  _ I  _ know that  _ Randy Dowager  _ from ’27 to ’29 is a ‘valuable volume.’ Damn thing is so rare that it’s basically an asset for any book collector. What I’d really like to know why  _ you _ think it’s so special.” 

Cassandra was a good woman, and a friend, but chronically incapable of laughing at herself or being laughed at. “Be quiet, dwarf, lest I be forced to hand your assets to you forcefully.” 

Varric took that as his queue to duck and move to roll away, expecting that she would throw the literal book at him.  Instead the Seeker carefully placed the book on a shelf while Varric, still tired from his earlier acrobatics and trapped in his own momentum, toppled over his own feet onto the floor. This caused the Seeker to laugh so hard she snorted. Cole cocked his head to the side and informed the group that “the ground didn’t know where it was, until the stone fell on it.” 

Lavellan, who had been a bit serious and pent-up lately, was bent double, laughing with her hands on the front of her thighs and gasping. She opened her eyes and made to stand up. “Oh, Creators that was – what’s this?” She picked up something from the floor, covered in runes written in a very familiar hand but still stitched together, like a child’s impression of a book. Varric, firmly planted on the floor nonetheless felt the ground fall away from underneath him as she began to read aloud. 

“Hard in Hightown, Chapter???” rang out in the Inquisitor’s lovely, moderate voice, the question at the end trailing up and up and up. She cleared her throat.

_ He poured a glass of red Orlesian wine and carried it out to the patio where Lady Marielle sat, playing a lute for the benefit of a distant flock of cormorants and a sleepy mabari hound.  _

_ Donnen handed her the glass with a smile. "Can I get you anything else, your ladyship?" _

_ "That's very kind of you, guardsman." Marielle set aside her lute; the sleepy hound looked up, annoyed at having its lullaby interrupted. _

_ "It's just Donnen these days," he replied, looking out over the waves. "My time in the Kirkwall guard is over." _

_ "Is it?" She smiled slyly over the glass. "You don't think naming a tavern The Watch was a sign that perhaps you can take the guardsman out of Kirkwall, and even out of the Guard, but he never... quite leaves?" _

_ The sun was setting behind them. The hound stretched and ambled over to the table to lay his head on Lady Marielle's knee and beg for table scraps. In the distance, the cormorants took off in a single motion to return to their roosts up the shore. _

_ Donnen smiled back. "Maybe you're right. But tonight I'm off duty, your ladyship." _

_ "Marielle," she corrected. "And to answer your question, you can get me some company. One guardsman might suffice." _

_ And the two of them watched the last of the light disappear together in peace. _

 

Varric knew what this was. He knew it as surely as he knew his mother’s name, his favourite tunic, and the steps through his old suite in the Hanged Man in the dark. He knew what it was – but he knew what it wasn’t. And what it wasn’t was something he had ever put to paper. So – how the hell did it get here?

“What the – I never wrote that!” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where I should warn for verb tense nonsense. It gets ambitious, yikes!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first two lines in italics are from the real Hard in Hightown.

_ “Might want to wake up one of the healers.” He managed a pained smile. “I wasn’t sure you’d be here.”  _

_ “Neither was I. Your message was a little vague.” Marielle tried to examine his makeshift bandage, but Donnen waved her away from it.  _

_ It was the pressure that came with her hands so near him, her still dressed in the black of mourning. Donnen had handed over the Sword of Hessarian, shocked to have moved her to tears with the gesture and walked off, assuming he would never see her again.  _

_ Lady Marielle. Skin like fine porcelain, hair like black glass, eyes like sapphires. Deadly and beautiful as an obsidian blade; elegant as any noblewoman’s best gown. She was an agent for the Chantry, and clearly one of some note to be trusted with a relic like the Sword of Hessarian. She was the most captivating woman he had ever seen, noble, and clearly still grieving the recent loss of her husband. Donnen Brennokovic had been the one to find the body. _

_ He had been surprised when, arriving at the clinic, she stepped out in front of him.  _

_ “Guardsman,” she said, moving forward and then pulling back. “It’s – the Sword. Thank you.”  _

_ “As I’ve said, my lady, you’re welcome to it. I trust you will place it in the right hands. I don’t need more thanks than that – and for you to put in that good word with the Maker, of course.” He was trying to be even half as gentlemanly as he felt her presence demanded, which still exceeded the average social grace of a lifetime member of the Kirkwall Guard by a large margin.  _

_ She stepped closer again, and this time, she didn’t step away. “I suspect my good word may not be enough, Brennokovic.” And with that, she reached a hand up to his face again, gently, and kissed him thoroughly.  _

_ “That might convince the Maker, too” he blasphemed, and brought his lips to hers again.  _

_ Absolutely not. No. This is dreck. Note to self: burn this. – VT _

 

“Ugh,” said Varric, crumpling up the parchment. He was starting to see why the Seeker said “ugh” so often. As grunts went, it was expressive as anything. Low effort, too. 

He stood up from the desk he’d had installed in his room at Skyhold, stretched to pop his back into the place it preferred to be. He thought about pouring a drink. 

_ Hightown  _ had aged well enough, though in retrospect he probably should have asked for some help with the boat parts. He was proud of it; he thought it brought something new into the popular fiction of his day, and clearly there was a continued interest. After that abomination of a ‘novel’ they’d found in Chateau Haine that called itself  _ Hard in Hightown II _ , and whatever bullshit was going on with  _ The Re-Punchening _ , he’d also started to think Guardsman Brennokovic’s story deserved an authorized, actual sequel. He’d floated the idea past his publisher via one of the Inquisition’s very well-trained ravens. They’d said some reasonable things about distribution and royalties, and here he was, trying to pick up the story right where it had left off.

Clearly that had been a mistake. He’d gotten soft, soft-headed and even softer-hearted as he aged. He’d thought that self-indulgent wish fulfilment was the literary domain of the young, but ever since he’d received That Letter, he’d had a hard time reining it in.

 

_ V,  _ That Letter began.  _ I’m glad you wrote to me. Firstly, I never realized exactly how much you lied to the Seekers of Truth to keep them away from me. Immovable object, unstoppable force, all of that. You are a top-notch liar, which is of course one of the things you and I both love about you.  _

His stomach had fluttered in a way entirely unbecoming of a dwarf of in his middle years who had a spy network, a bibliography, and half a lifetime of promising but fruitless letters from beautiful women. The letter continued. 

_ Yes, well. It has been terribly boring hiding out without you. At first I thought it was because there was no one to tell me good stories about myself or describe my features to scores of admirers. I did find an inn, though, and tried that out on my own, and it wasn’t nearly as satisfying. Which meant that it wasn’t that I missed you for  _ me _ , but for  _ you.  _ I miss your terrible shirts and your not-terrible earring, and your distinctly not-terrible hands and voice. (You can’t make fun of me for not writing this nearly so cleverly as you would. I’m not you, which is rather the point of this entire ‘something is missing from my current circumstances’ business.) I’ve done some thinking (could you smell the smoke, har har? Anyway I had help) and I think it’s possible you might believe me to have some not-terrible qualities as well. I will come to Skyhold and help the Inquisition regardless, of course, but maybe sometime around all of the world-saving and demon-slaying, we could talk? Or, if you’d rather, “talk.”  _

_ Eyebrow-waggingly yrs, _

 

Varric had read a great number of books and written some besides. He’d read and written leaflets and pamphlets and contracts and even, secretly, poetry. Putting aside the fact that there was nothing terrible whatsoever about his shirts, these two paragraphs were his favourite words ever put to paper. 

He had read them at least once a day since they had arrived, carefully refolding the letter every night. Filled with a kind of benevolence for poor, smitten Donnen Brennokovic, Varric uncrumpled his draft of the first scene of a real sequel to  _ Hard in Hightown _ and placed it in a box he used for drafts and errata. 

Helping himself to a moderate pour of the brandy she’d liked so much but never bothered to learn the name of, he took the letter and settled in comfortable chair next to the fire. He didn’t open the letter and read it over again that night, already knowing the words as well as any famous tavern tune. Instead, he placed the letter on one arm of the chair and rested his hand on it. 

Varric finished his brandy but stayed in the chair, Hawke’s words at hand as he went quickly to the dreamless sleep of the dwarves. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "What a woman," said the pirate queen, affecting a deep, gruff, flat-accented voice. "Eyes like jewels, skin like silk, and hips that I definitely haven't been dreaming about since the Fifth Blight. Maker's hairy something or other, I can't wait to write a whole book about my dear friend that I've just described."
> 
> Making fun of Varric's books carried on over most of a bottle of rum. Eventually, Hawke became aware of a strange tightness in her chest and a wobbly feeling in her stomach. She held up the bottle and looked at the light glowing through it. Perhaps the rum had gone off? 
> 
> "Bela," said Hawke, intending to ask about the rum. "Do you think that Varric could have feelings for me?"
> 
> The next day, Hawke wrote a letter.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canon divergence - Hawke accompanies the Inquisition to Halamshiral instead of returning immediately to the sad rainy cave in Crestwood.

From his flabbergasted spot on the floor of the Shattered Library, Varric thinks about his first trip to an important political council at the Winter Palace, still in the early days of the Inquisition. 

 

Lavellan had done her best at Court, Ruffles and the Nightingale guiding her hand and Vivienne propping up her reputation through the sheer weight of her own. They’d brought Hawke with them, a wildcard and a fantastic distraction, and Lavellan had made the most of that distraction to do dig into the mysterious identify of the assassin Corypheus had sent for the Empress. The Inquisitor and her companions had been hot on the trail when etiquette had demanded they stop rummaging around in off-limits areas of Halamshiral and resume seeing and being seen. 

Varric took the opportunity to slip away and hold court on his own, following people with the right sort of look to a bit of a  _ salon  _ lower in the gardens. 

“But how will you deal with the continuity errors in  _ Hard in Hightown _ , Monsieur?” He had raised an eyebrow at the young  _ comte  _ who was talking about his beloved child in that tone of voice. “Will you not recall the entire print run?” 

The young-voiced man’s friend interrupted. “ _ Tiens,  _ Giscard, there is no need for that. Your own inability to follow the plot does not mean that there are errors in it!” Varric chuckled and made a mental note to tell Hawke about this later. “Besides, Monsieur Dwarf is here in celebrated company tonight. The Inquisition, and Kirkwall’s Champion? We should be so honoured as to have read any of his works.” 

Varric did not love Orlais. It was far too Orlesian for his tastes. He did, however, enjoy watching Orlesians apply all that Orlesian-ness against each other. He underscored his mental note to tell Hawke all about this later, after they’d survived the night and she could stop being the distracting and impressive Champion of Kirkwall and go back to being a person. A distracting and impressive person, but still – a person. 

He pictured Hawke in the ballroom, mingling in her red gown. He wondered if she’d caused an international incident yet. The Inquisition were honoured guests of the Grand Duke tonight, but Hawke was a guest of the Inquisition. Sales of  _ The Champion of Kirkwall _ had never flagged in the last few years and had spiked again after the explosion at the Conclave. People were looking for heroes, and Lavellan had brought a wide assortment with them to the peace talks at the Winter Palace. 

Only one of them, though, was likely to command as much attention as Hawke. Varric thrilled a little to think of his Marian outshining the entire gala without even trying. She had never enjoyed these kinds of events, but she was very good at overwhelming them. She took her distaste for the scene and weaponized it, recognized her rough edges and made a point of showing how sharp they could be. 

He’d seen it happen earlier in the evening, when Lavellan and her entourage had been introduced to the Grand Duke. 

“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Grand Duke,” Hawke had said. “Tell me, is the Empress’ fondness for magic a family trait? I do hope so. As you see, the Inquisition is bringing peace and order through the work of free mages and we would dearly prefer to continue bringing peace. And order.” 

Lavellan mouthed “we?” with a concerned look to her ambassador, whose own expression made Varric glad he wasn’t in business with the Montilyets. At the same time, the Grand Duke took Hawke’s outstretched hand and bent over it, remarking that this was, of course, a peace talk as well as a celebration, and any peaceable friend was welcome. Hawke, ever the lady, winked and breezed inside. Gaspard du Chalons did not turn his head to look after her, but Varric could tell that he wanted to. 

Vivienne followed Hawke in with a simple “my dear” to the second most powerful person in Orlais, and the Inquisitor was presented by both Josephine and Leliana doing their utmost to remind du Chalons that the Inquisition was not a rogue apostate threat but was in fact very powerful all the same, and would the Grand Duke kindly recall that customs in Kirkwall are quite different, even among the nobility. 

Varric had coughed at that, to avoid having to call bullshit. Fortunately Lavellan and her more diplomatic advisors were busy making the Grand Duke believe that he was leading them into the palace vestibule. Solas had been hanging back as well, playing attendant to Lavellan, so it was with Solas that Varric exchanged a grin and raised eyebrows afterwards. 

“Tell me, Master Tethras, have you always fancied humans? Is that common among surface dwarves?”

“Humans? Are you kidding me, Chuckles? Not a chance,” he lied. “I’m afraid the Grand Duke in particular isn’t my type. The whole ‘squabbling over birthright with lethal consequences’ thing is one of my turn-offs.” 

“Curious,” said Solas in the same even voice. He really was quite tall for an elf, wasn’t he, at least half a foot taller than Hawke was. “Still, your Hawke is quite a remarkable human.” 

He couldn’t lie about that, and only smiled at Solas and shrugged his shoulders as if to say that Solas could think what he liked. The bald elf had looked as smug as he ever did (namely,  _ very _ ), and gone inside. Varric had followed quickly after, making a face about smug elves and wondering if he and his remarkable human would ever get to have that talk. 

 

“Monsieur? Monsieur Tethras?” Varric shook his head and came back to himself. Someone was smoking elfroot and the conversation was a bit louder than he remembered.  _ Head in the game, Tethras. You’re supposed to be spying or selling, not daydreaming.  _

“Sorry friends, just a bit distracted. The wine is a damn sight better than we usually get, all the way up in the Frostbacks and preoccupied with saving the world. You were saying something about  _ Hard in Hightown _ ?” 

“Yes! While  _ mon ami  _ here may not have paid it its due attention, I assure you that I and many others like me would be thrilled to read a true sequel. What do you say to that?” 

“Well,” he said lowering his voice to a stage whisper, “it's funny you should mention that. I’ve been talking to my publishers…” 

He thought about the letter locked in his chest at Skyhold, and the talk that still hadn’t happened. A flash of inspiration, Lady Marielle revealing her presence undercover in a group of corrupt Templars, a glint in sapphire blue eyes, flash of red, Donnen stumbling across the aftermath and  _ knowing,  _ but choosing justice over the law…

“To be honest, I might just say  _ oui. _ ” 

 

Varric and Hawke had given each other and the crowd a dance, but nothing more, each carried along separately in the exuberance of the Inquisition having saved the day and solidified its political power. There was time to celebrate, but  not to talk. Hawkegone directly from Halamshiral west to the Approach, and he’d gone back to Skyhold to wait for news and to distract himself with writing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The super catty suggestion from the Orlesian man I have named Giscard re: recalling the whole print run is pulled from DAI.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lou Donaldson's "Blues Walk" is the only appropriate soundtrack to the first HiH excerpt in this chapter.

_ Rain fell on the former guardsman’s overcoat, a heavy leather duster that was his most constant companion after leaving the Kirkwall Guard. Donnen was walking one of his old patrols. Lowtown to the steps, then to Hightown’s market and back. If he insisted on walking alone at night in Kirkwall, at least he’d do it on a path where odds were almost as good that he’d meet a Guard as a criminal.  _

_ Almost.  _

_ He had let her go, again. Found a trail of blood and scuffmarks leading into a warehouse by the docks, followed it in like the loyal mabari she’d once remarked over. She'd been halfway through climbing out a window on the far side when he pushed the heavy door open. _

_ There were four dead Templars on the ground. _

_ “Guardsman.”  _

_ “I’m not, you know. I retired.”  _

_ Her black eyebrows arched, and what could have been buffoonish on another face read only as elegant surprise on hers. “So soon? You’re a young man.”  _

_ “These,” said Donnen Brennokovic, gesturing to the bodies “are  _ dead _ men.”  _

_ She swung her legs back in from the window. Her feet touched the floor without a sound, landing with all the grace of a dancer. “They are. Would you believe me if I said that Kirkwall is better for it?”  _

_ Donnen said nothing, but even though it was night, he felt the shadow of the Gallows fall over him. He’d known good mages. He’d known that pockets of Kirkwall’s Templars were out of control.  _

_ He knew that Lady Marielle could twist him around one of those impossibly elegant fingers with a single look, but that she was an agent of the Chantry. If the Divine thought these Templars were beyond redemption, who was he to question Marielle’s even, sapphire-eyed stare.  _

_ He said nothing but nodded once. She paid him for his silence with a smile and was gone. Rain started to fall on the roof of the warehouse, a heavy and foreboding drum. If you were given to think that way, that is.  _

_ That had been three nights ago. He was beginning to suspect that she’d actually left the city. He pulled a flask from the inside pocket of his duster and uncapped it.  _

_ Drinking and moping in the rain. Maker, he had it bad, didn’t he? Didn’t take investigative skills to figure that out.  _

_ Donnen was so preoccupied that he didn’t hear the assassin behind him, didn’t notice anything but the burn of the whiskey and his own wants until he felt a cold, wet leather glove on his jaw. He was retired, but not worn all the way out, barely past 40, and he pulled back from the hand, not against it, moving down and away until he was sure there were a few good inches between the knife and his throat.  _

_ The Templar rallied and drew his arm back as if to throw. “Let the blade pass through the flesh,” he chanted, and then fell with a sickening thud as the pommel of a sword flashed through the night and into his temple.  _

_ Donnen hadn’t righted himself yet, and a hand he’d put down to steady himself slipped on the wet paving stones. He found himself back on his elbows, soaked through, as the woman he’d let walk away from murdering a handful of holy knights earlier that week crouched over him, her legs on either side of his own. She pressed a hand to his cheek, turning his head as if looking for something. “Your healer did fine work. You haven’t scarred.” The former guardsman swallowed around nothing.  _

_ “Um – my hero? Forgive me, my lady, I’m not in the habit of being rescued.”  _

_ Lady Marielle stood up from where she’d straddled his legs to get a look at him and turned away.  _

_ “I’ll deal with this,” she said, toeing the unconscious Templar with her boot. “You should get somewhere dry and warm, Brennokovic.” She seemed to think for a moment “dry, warm, and out of sight of Templars for a while. They seem to think you’ve something to do with that unfortunate scene at the warehouse.”  _

_ He caught the corner of a smile on her fine, shapely mouth as she bent to deal with the Templar. He didn’t see her again until the next time she wanted him to.  _

 

At his desk in the hall at Skyhold, Varric put the pen down with a grimace. Not as bad as the last one, but still.  _ “My hero?”  _  Maybe he needed to stick to  _ Swords and Shields _ . He may have some disappointed fans in Orlais. 

He tried again.

 

_ The sun flashed off the river, the Minanter slow but still strong enough to glint blue in the late summer sky. There was no smell of the sea, or of pavement, or of a city that remembered centuries of death, oceans of blood.   _

_ Instead, there was only the wheat in the fields, the flowers at the sill, and the grapes turning heavy on their vines. Those, and the sweet clean smell of his child’s hair, the sprog climbing up onto his lap as he spent the heat of the day in the shade. Donnen Brennokovic was too old for this shit – farming and fatherhood – but here it was, all the same. He put down a glass of water, cold and clear as their well was deep, and indulged himself in a moment of paternal smugness.  _

_ “Da,” asked the boy. “What’s it like in Kirkwall?” Donnen swallowed and thought for a moment. How to explain a place like that, the stink of the harbour, the tension of a tavern on a hot night, the way danger lurked in the same corners as opportunity. How to explain that the stones of its streets were built into his bones, that he had never felt higher than when he stepped into places above his station in Hightown, that he had seen holiness and horror both.  _

_ She came to his rescue again, this time from having to explain. “Kirkwall? Oh, sweetheart, Kirkwall is really quite dreadful.”  _

_ The child beamed at his mother approaching. “It can’t be dreadful! Da is from Kirkwall, and you married him.”  _

_ “You’re too clever by half, my love,” smiled Marielle, a trace of crows’ feet at the corners of her eyes. They had met, and wed, and had their child later in both of their lives, after all. Her hair was still a shock of black, though it fell down her shoulders now, and her skin was still firm, if darker from the sun. Her eyes still captured Donnen each time he looked at her, breathtakingly blue from every angle. “But Kirkwall isn’t a very nice place at all. You know how you like our garden, with the crystal grace and prophet’s laurel?” The boy smiled. “Well, in Kirkwall there is a place called The Garden, but it isn’t a garden at all! It’s made up of great big dreary houses covered in thorns, and moss instead of grass or vines, and they grow it that way on purpose. Can you imagine?” _

Lady  _ Marielle affected her most aristocratically shocked expression and the boy laughed. “It sounds scary. I think I like it here better.” With all the certainty of a very young child, he added “we shan’t move house.”  _

_ Donnen huffed out a laugh and bounced the lad off his knee, watching as he ran to a nearby apple tree and tried to climb.  _

_ “I’ve had a message from Her office, Donnen. There’s a job for me.”  _

_ Donnen sighed, but he nodded all the same. It still happened, from time to time, his lady wife would receive a message from a messenger he certainly never saw, and then she’d be off again, doing things he’d rather not contemplate, one of the nails on the hand of the Chantry. She had told him once after the boy had been born that she never killed anymore, which was something.  _

_ Donnen kept his eyes fixed on their son for a short time, feeling the same steady fondness and extravagant love as ever. Brown hair that looked burnished gold, or coppery, or bronze in the light; his own freckles and blunt features; and a pair of jewel-blue eyes. Distinctly the child of both of his parents, and more precious than all the treasure in Kirkwall’s wealthiest estates.   _

_ “If there’s a job, then you have to go. I know the rules. Be safe.”  _

_ She took Donnen’s hand in her own, and they let the sun pass overhead for a time.  _

 

Well, shit. This was criminally not a sequel to a crime novel. He was inarguably besotted and it was ruining his authorial voice in a serious way. 

Thinking he’d go listen to war stories in the tavern to bring back some healthy cynicism, Varric left his desk and made his way across the yard to the Herald’s Rest. Lace Harding had come into the yard walking just like a dwarf who had very recently spent too much time on a pony, and he asked her if this meant the Inquisitor was back from Orlais. 

“Oh, hello Ser! Varric, I mean. My company’s just come back to rest and resupply. The Inquisitor isn’t far behind. I think two days?” 

Lace Harding was young, but she was lovely and lethal and had a smile like the sun, and if he were another dwarf he’d probably have brought her gold and flowers by now. (What? He was  _ besotted _ , not dead.) Instead, he was so overwhelmed with gratitude at the news that the Inquisitor was almost back and the thought that Hawke would come with her that he simply choked out his thanks to Harding and rushed into the tavern before anyone could see his big, stupid grin. He then proceeded to benevolently relieve Lieutenant Aclassi of at least a week’s worth of pay, and get happily, life-affirmingly drunk. He hadn’t thought to ask if Hawke was coming back to Skyhold with the Inquisitor’s party, too excited by his assumption and what it could mean.  

Maybe they would talk when she came back this time. 


	5. Chapter 5

The sun had just set over the desert and the oppressive heat of the day lingered, pressed down by the smoke of campfires. He had scuffed his boots on sand-brushed stone and uncapped his flask. 

The touch of the flask to his lips brought relief. Water, and fresh. There was a spring nearby, though not much of one. Not a river, and certainly not the sea. 

Varric had stood at the edge of the camp half a day’s march from Adamant Fortress, and watched the moons rise. It was a tense camp, not the type of tension that wants release from a valve, but heavy all the same, another weight on top of the smoke and the heat and the night. 

He’d never really paid attention to it before, but sand had a smell. In Kirkwall, he’d never noticed, not even on the trips along the Wounded Coast. Mind you, he’d usually been distracted on those trips, either by imminent death or the sight of his dearest friend running ahead of him in those truly remarkable trousers she favoured. He’d smiled at himself, a little proud that he was able to shore up a bit of a cad’s reputation in his own head, if not in the real world. 

So there he was, thinking about the smell of sand on the  _ eve of battle _ , as it went, trying to ground himself in the details of the present and being pulled back into the details of memory. A writer’s habit, and a bad one. Not the one he needed when they started the attack. He would have backs to watch. 

He came back to the present again at a whiff of lilac, soft and sweet amidst the smells of camp and desert. Hawke planted herself on the sand next to where he stood, her hair damp and skin scrubbed soft. She’d been to the stream to bathe. 

“I hope you bathed downstream of the drinking water, Hawke. You know what happened the last time an entire camp caught a case of Champion Fever.” He settled on the sand beside her. He’d now been able to experience for himself the truth of how quickly nights in the desert cooled. 

“You wound me, Varric. I’ve hardly seen you in two months and you’re reminding me of the Water Purity Incident of ’35? Besides, I was careful to bathe only in the bend in the river marked ‘this drinking water property of Varric Tethras’.”

And hadn’t that done something to him, the thought of Hawke bare and relaxed in a place attached to his name, as absurd as the image of the sign was. He had turned to her and she had smiled, not a soft smile but a testing one, one corner pulled into a point and her eyes fixed on his own. 

“If we’re going to have that talk, Hawke…” He trailed off there, leaving things open for her, a test of his own. 

Hawke sighed. It drove him crazy when she sighed. No simple exhalation should be that lovely. “I know. I know. It’s only – we are taking on the unbreachable, legendary Adamant Fortress tomorrow, aren’t we? And we won’t be fighting together. Something could go terribly, terribly wrong. I believe tomorrow is a Tuesday, after all.” She’d held that old joke out like bait. He didn’t take it. 

“Help me out here, Hawke, because I’m not following. Do we agree that there’s something here, between us, that we should probably stop ignoring?” She nodded, conceding his point. “And do we agree that we care about each other, and trust each other?” Another nod, this time with a genuine smile. “We don’t have to agree that we’re not getting any younger, my back is doing a great job of arguing that point – “ 

“Yes, all right, you’re grumpy and also quite correct, damn it. Shut up,” said Hawke, and leaned in to kiss him. She pulled back after a moment, looking at his face but not into his eyes. “You’ve freckled again, Varric! The Inquisitor is a remarkable woman, getting you to go outside into the sunshine.” She put on a gruff, deep voice. “Where there’s dirt. And bugs. And slopes. And  _ rain _ .” He laughed, a real laugh, and this time he kissed her.

They had stayed there until the moons were both high in the sky and the water in Hawke’s hair started to freeze, Hawke eventually curling into him “for warmth, of course.” 

“Whatever you say, sweetheart,” and he had felt her smile at the pet name. 

“Varric? Does this mean we’ve had our talk? I would so love to return to conversations based on a firm grounding of terrible jokes and comments about my arse.” 

He remembered laughing. It was one of his favourite memories of laughter. “Sure Hawke. Why not?” 

They walked back to camp shortly after. Hawke had stopped herself from following to his tent. “You do know why I just can’t tonight, don’t you Varric?” 

“Of course I do,” he’d replied. He watched her face fall just a little, thinking about how the fight could go wrong. She wasn’t a worrier, and it didn’t suit her face at all. “You’ll need your strength for tomorrow, right? And we both know I’d wear you out.” 

Hawke laughed, and pressed him to her, and then swayed her hips a little more as she walked away. 

  
  


Another night in another part of the desert, Hawke’s return to his life still only a letter folded in the inside pocket of his coat, Adamant just the seeds of a plan. He and the Seeker had been testing a truce of sorts between them, and when she mentioned his writing, Cole spoke up. 

“Your stories aren’t real. But then people read them and they are!” 

Varric offered a default charming writer smile and shrugged like he was on the back of one of his own dust jackets. “Get the readers invested and you’ll have them forever.” And then he learned that his words had been read and heard and felt by so many people that they’d made their way into the Fade. 

“Spirits spill around the veil making shapes. Reality from writing!” Cole was buoyant, happy to feel Varric’s own shocked happiness and pride. He couldn’t touch the Fade, and yet, he did.

“Do you write to reach across? To hear the song that was sundered?” 

“I’m…not sure what that even means, Kid, but probably?” 

It felt right, anyway. He’d had his fair share of specific yearnings, sure, but Varric knew that the longing, the sense of reaching had been and always would be been a part of him. Bartrand had once, deep in his cups, said that he felt the lack of the Stone like an emptiness. Nugshit, Varric had said. The only emptiness Bartrand worried about was in his glass or in his pockets. 

Writing to reach across. He hadn’t quite known what it meant, but he’d liked the sound of it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's evident by now, but there's a lot of falling back through memory in this fic. If I could do it again, I'd reconsider the way that verb tenses are used to portray this.
> 
> (The Cole/Varric discussion of Varric's Fade fandom is based on game banter.)


	6. Chapter 6

Adamant had been a disaster. Corypheus’ demonic dragon. The collapse of the fortress. Inquisition fighting Grey Wardens, and the biggest Fade rift Varric had seen since the Breach. 

He’d been high on the walls, possessed Wardens in his sights, bolt after bolt keeping his people safe, and alive, when things had fallen apart.  _ Literally.  _

He watched the Inquisitor fall from the bridge, with Hawke, Stroud, Cassandra, Solas, and Dorian in tow. He stopped breathing until he saw Lavellan open the rift beneath them and they plummeted through, and then he started again only to keep himself from being sick on his boots. 

Cole appeared beside him. “They fell, flying, fading into the Fade – “ 

“Yeah Kid, I’m right here, that just happened. Are they alive?” 

The spirit boy looked for all the world like he was listening for something, and then he said “yes,” simply, and vanished, appearing on the ground below seconds later, daggers flowing through demons like water. 

Varric resumed breathing, and bolting.  _ Load. Shoot. Repeat. _ Repeat, repeated endlessly, until his shoulder was screaming stiff and the crossbow weighed as much as a mountain. Repeated again, until green hope erupted in the courtyard and he saw Lavellan and Warden Stroud running through.  

He could be a team player to a point, but Varric left his post on the wall immediately. The demons had gone down, and the Wardens appeared to have come to their senses. He hurried past the tail end of the fight to where he saw the Inquisitor addressing the crowd from the raised edge of a fountain. 

“Where’s Hawke?” he demanded the instant anyone else stopped speaking. The Inquisitor turned to look at him, her face falling in sympathy. “Where’s Hawke,” he asked again, and a part of his brain still managed to notice Stroud curling in on himself a little bit further, like a man in the grip of shame or pain. He heard the strong footsteps of Cassandra approaching behind him. “Hawke,” started the Inquisitor. Shit, why was she still orating? “Hawke sacrificed herself to save us and strike a decisive blow against Corypheus!” 

He’d known, of course. There was no scent of lilacs amidst the death and fire in the courtyard. There was no sharp tongue to goad him into picking up where they had left off. 

Varric hung his head and turned away. 

Cassandra, Maker bless her, tried anyway. “Varric, I’m – “but he held out his hand to stop her. “Leave it alone, Seeker.” 

 

He didn’t speak to the Inquisitor for a fortnight. He was too angry, and he hadn’t wanted to be, which made him tongue-tied and clumsy. Lavellan came to him eventually, at his spot near the fireplace in the great hall at Skyhold. He liked Lavellan, and cared for her, and he knew damn well that Hawke would have taken this fight and made it her own simply because someone had to do it, and she was the least tied to the fate of the entire world or something. 

He still got to be pissed off about it.

He had found himself relived that Hawke hadn’t let him take her to bed the night before Adamant, and then angry again. Had she  _ planned  _ to die in the fight? Was there so little in her life worth sticking around for because if so, well, it was just bad manners to give a dwarf false hope like that. 

It was like this that Lavellan found him, choking up again, still trying to joke out his frustrations with Hawke. Except now, she was dead.  

Varric had wanted to forgive the Inquisitor. She was young, and very brave and good, and she hadn’t chosen this awful situation in the slightest. So when she came to talk to him, he had swallowed back his anger and told her a story about Hawke, a misplaced beast, and an unlikely game of cards with some local thugs. He’d tried to let himself share his grief with another person. 

It had been too much though, all this openness and sharing. He muttered an excuse about writing letters and returned to his rooms. His rooms had a bottle, a decent fire, and stone walls that neither wanted nor needed his forgiveness. 

There had been a pile of correspondence on his desk. The trip to Adamant and back had taken him away for the whole month, so he shouldn’t haven been surprised. The letters looked insurmountable, but he needed to keep the whole enterprise afloat or there wouldn’t be anything for him to go back to when he’d kicked his own ass out of his grief. He’d wondered if maybe his solicitor’s apprentice would have tried his hand at the contract for the textile import holdings again, that was always good for a laugh. 

As it happened, the first parcel was from his solicitor’s office. A handful of papers had fallend out, but the one that caught his eye was the one he’d asked for shortly after he received Hawke’s letter, all those months before. 

A real estate transaction had concluded. Varric held in his hands a copy of the deed to an actually quite decent inn in Kirkwall. Home, and home again. 

He’s really not the most profane man, but Varric had cursed out loud and vehemently. 

“Fuck! Stonefucking Void-blasted nugshit sonofabitch!” He heard a sob leave his mouth – so much for the single and still masculine tear he’d cried on Lavellan. “Maker damn it, Maker damn me.” Grief had hit him sharply all over again, exploding against his solar plexus like a handful of  _ gaatlok _ . 

 

That fresh burst of grief had settled eventually, had cleared enough for him to splash some water on his face from the basin and pour a cup for himself from the jug. He didn’t touch the bottle, instinct and memory both telling him it wasn’t a good idea. He stared at the deed in his hand, contemplated putting it in the fire, remembered that it was only a copy, which really would have taken a lot of the satisfaction out of the gesture.

Varric had taken a deep breath and puts the copy of the deed down. “Shit, Hawke,” he had said to himself, rubbing a hand across his face. “I was going to suggest we call it Champion’s Rest. We would have made a killing.” 

 

He returned to the field quickly, preferring complaining about sleeping in tents to having to sleep alone in the keep. They were riding through the Hinterlands one afternoon, looking for rifts that needed closing and demon asses that needed kicking. It had been pleasant weather, not too hot or cold, his horse sturdy and well-behaved, Cole and the Seeker finding common ground of a sort. Varric had decided that he could let his mind wander until Cass needed to punch more bears. 

He hadn’t written since Adamant. He could think those words finally,  _ since Adamant,  _ but he couldn’t quite bring himself to give it another name, yet. When he looked at his grief with his writer’s eyes, he had seen that same lifelong yearning, amplified a thousand times. What was once a smallish hole had become an abyss. He hated how genuinely he felt that analogy and wondered if putting it down on paper could help him find a better way to shape the wordless, formless space that had opened up inside him since Adamant. Since Hawke. 

From the back of his well-behaved mount, he had started telling himself the story. Maybe he could pick up the  _ Hightown _ sequel again, but instead of Donnen’s hard-boiled adventures with Marielle, it could be the story of another one of the Kirkwall Guard. Another rookie, but not a bad guy in disguise, just someone who genuinely wants to help, who joined the guard because someone had to. Someone who did the right thing all day or all night, even if they might gripe a bit to the bartender at The Watch of an evening. Everyone knew that the innkeep had been a member of the guard a few years back, and they all said Donnen had seen some serious shit in his time. Been a party to, as well. 

Rookie McNewkid would show up at The Watch one night with a paramour on their arm and they’d place a silver on the bar. “Hey, Guardsman,” the rookie would call out. “Don’t suppose you’ve got anything a bit more high end than the usual swill?” Donnen would roll his eyes a little bit but say “sure, Kid, what do you have in mind?” 

“Um,” would be the reply from the well-meaning and generally heroic but still young rookie. “I guess something Orlesian? Red?” 

“Orlesian red. Coming right up.” Donnen would spin to the back of the bar to find a low-priced bottle of wine he could pour for this kid and their date. He’d drape a whitish bar towel over his forearm as he turned back, bottle and two glasses at hand, and the rookie’s companion would preen a little at having landed such a worldly and sophisticated young hero for the evening. Donnen would smile, watching them both drift to a quiet table with their bottle of wine. 

That’s when she’d show up. Lady Marielle, she of the impeccable wit and grace and beauty and timing. “Orlesian red, hm? A not a bad one, either. You’re a man of surprising depths, Guardsman.” 

He scoffs. “I have worked in Hightown for decades, my lady. And as I keep telling you, I retired” She’d sit at the bar and he would find another bottle, one that might be worth the leather in her left boot sole at the very least. He’d pour, and then the only thing he’d see would be her long fingers accepting the glass from his hand and she settled in. 

 

Varric is jolted back to his surroundings when Cole speaks. “The stone is cracked, split, jagged. The hawk would have been safe if it had stayed, but that isn’t what hawks do.”  

He had resolved in that moment that he would never write another sequel to  _ Hard in Hightown _ . It didn’t matter if it was in Hawke’s nature to fly off to an unimaginable adventure without him. He was increasingly aware that that was fine, for some value of fine, and he had survived and would endure. But that didn’t mean he had to give what was left of her away. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cole's dialogue at the end of this chapter is pulled from DAI. Varric's double "Where's Hawke?" after Hawke is left in the Fade is pulled from that time Inquisition tore out my entire heart and charged me for a triple-A videogame for the privilege.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirkwall, later.

They crown him Viscount at the start of Bloomingtide, the day warm but not so hot that the air at Viscount’s Keep isn’t at least a little bit fresh. As fond as he was of the Inquisitor, and of the Inquisition, he doesn’t miss Skyhold even a little. Too much mountain beneath and around, and he swore the thin air had made him lightheaded the entire time. 

No, Kirkwall was home, for all of her (numerous, significant) flaws. When he gets back and sees how his funding of relief and rebuilding projects has been used, and he praises the contractors who’ve done good and terrifies the ones who haven’t onto the righteous path of not trying to rip him off, people take notice. He’s way too connected for the Merchant’s Guild to try to bully anymore, or for the Carta to threaten. He’s the legal owner of a reputable if mediocre inn and a fine estate in Hightown, he’s friends with Divine Victoria and Lady Seeker Cassandra Pentaghast and the Grand Enchanter and Inquisitor Lavellan _and_ , it’s rumoured, the Queen of the Eastern Seas. Plus, best-selling author. Once he hears someone telling a joke about a dwarf on a throne at a card game, he makes up his mind. It’s only a few months after that that the council of Kirkwall has decided to name him the Viscount. 

Aveline and Donnic come to the ceremony, of course, as friends and guests. Of course, everyone also know that Aveline is the Captain of the Guard. Well, shit. Varric has gone and become respectable. 

He smiles to think of it and swears himself, out loud where everyone can hear, to Kirkwall and to its throne. 

 

“You know, Bran, it’s actually quite nice to be the Viscount. I can’t believe you didn’t stick with this. I just do everything I’ve always done in a room at an inn or from the back of a horse or in a wet tent, but I do it from a palace and I sleep in a feather bed every night. Also, people seem to really like me. Seriously, what did you not like about this while you were keeping the chair warm?” 

Bran gives him his special look that he reserves for when they are alone. The look that says  _ eat shit, my lord.  _ “I suppose, my lord, that I simply didn’t have the stomach for it.” 

“Ouch,” says Varric, poking himself in his middle. “That hurts, Bran. I bleed.” 

Bran actually rolls his eyes and Varric grins, thrilled to have gotten him to loosen up for a minute. 

 

It pays off when Varric has to explain to his Seneschal that he has no intention of stopping playing cards for business or for pleasure. Wicked Grace nights at the Keep become  _ the  _ social event in Kirkwall for the better part of the season, sparking a fashion for less formal, more relaxed social affairs over all. Varric can even get Aveline to come to his games, that’s how sensible they are. 

He catches her looking at him one night, a bit proud, a bit sad. He winks and deals her back in, but privately, he agrees. 

 

Life in the City of Chains continues to improve, for Varric and for everyone. He keeps tabs on the Inquisition through Charter, and she keeps tabs on him. Rivaini actually docks once and comes ashore to bring him crates and crates of rum, spices, and rugs that he wholeheartedly accepts she acquired through legitimate means, like taking them from slavers by force. He hears rumours of a white-haired elf stirring up trouble in Tevinter and privately bets himself that Broody makes more headway shaking up the system than Sparkler will. Daisy continues to stay in the alienage and makes sure that the elves’ needs are met. She also makes sure he finds out when people start leaving to ‘go look for the Dalish’ more often than usual. He in turn makes sure that piece of information gets to Charter, because it’s weird. He’s basically the opposite of an elf and even he knows that most Dalish clans are reluctant to take in city elves. 

Varric even hears from Carver, once, a cautious and cagey letter sent from Hunter Fell of all places. It’s not easy to reply, but he forces himself and sends a message back to Weisshaupt for Junior. He doesn’t receive a reply, but everyone knows that the Wardens have gone quiet. That feels like it might end up being someone else’s problem, for a change. 

And Kirkwall itself, his terrible, hulking old girl, is doing really quite well. The city is as quiet as it ever gets. It isn’t even  _ too  _ quiet. He takes a genuine, heartfelt pride in the work that he and his people manage to do for the city, without taking every ounce of its character away from it. It’s a just a bit easier to breathe in, these days.

Viscount Hero and Viscount Writer and Viscount Deep Pockets are all very highly regarded by a large swath of the populace and, while he doesn’t actually enjoy boasting when there’s a possibility that he could mean it, you do have to give the people what they want. So when a request comes that he do a public reading as a draw to a gala where people will raise funds for orphanages, he agrees. 

 

Bran hushes the room for him, as masterful a shusher as one might imagine, and Varric cracks open the spine of a new copy of  _ Hard in Hightown.  _ “They say coin never sleeps,” he begins, voice as rich and warm as he can make it. 

Later, an earnest-faced teenager asks him if he would ever write a sequel, and he laughs off the question. “They keep me pretty busy these days – but if you want to give it a shot for me, let me know and we’ll talk about a licence.” 

 

The empty place is still there, of course, and it’s still not the Stone. He goes to bed willing himself to learn to dream, thinking about Donnen Brennokovic’s tavern by the sea, hoping to close his eyes and find himself there.

Nothing happens at night, but his days are good and full. When he receives his invitation to the Exalted Council, he tells Bran they’re off to meet with the Inquisition with a genuine smile. 


	8. Chapter 8

He tries for it to come out indignant – let them think another hack was out ruining his good name as the author of Thedas’ most successful crime novel. “I never  _ wrote  _ that!” He can hear the truth in his voice, though, too upset to be scandalized. 

Lavellan smiles, and Cassandra beams at him while Varric sits on the floor flooding with a directionless sense of having been betrayed. He hasn’t felt like this since Valammar and the sickening, enraging realization that Bianca was how Corypheus had come in possession of the horrors and powers of red lyrium, which of course meant that the whole mess really was Varric’s fault. No one should have known about red lyrium. The words Lavellan just read shouldn’t be in any book, anywhere. 

“But it is lovely, Varric!” Cassandra is as insistent as ever. “Perhaps the tone is at odds with much of  _ Hightown _ , but it is so clearly your authorial voice – and I think this is your hand, is it not?” 

“Listen, Cassandra, as much as I’m grateful for my fans, I can promise you that I never wrote that.” It was close enough to fact to serve as the truth, but she looks at him with her “you lying dwarf!” face. 

It’s Cole, as usual, who spills the beans. Helpfully. “He didn’t write it, though. He didn’t think the words’ weight was enough.” Cassandra looks at him harder, her eyes narrowing as she puts it together while Cole continues. 

“He writes, reaching, she reaches, reeling. Some pens are feathers, some words fly away.” 

Varric sees all of Lavellan’s earlier mirth evaporate and be replaced with a kind of awkward pain. 

Yeah, he thinks. That checks out. Awkward pain is exactly what he’s feeling.   

“I’m – I’m sorry, Varric. I had never thought it was like that, for you.” 

“Don’t worry about it, Seeker,” Varric waves off Cassandra’s sincerity as he rights himself. “I’ve got to maintain my artistic credibility somehow. I can handle a little bit of ‘the one that got away.’” He doesn’t need to tell her that that’s an accurate description of his entire romantic history.  

No one has anything else to say, and so they move on through the Crossroads, searching. 


	9. Chapter 9

Hawke had walked through the Fade for what almost certainly a very long time. It was impossible for her to say, because she felt neither hungry nor thirst nor sweaty, and she’d figured out some time ago how to simply magic the Nightmare guts out of her hair and robes. She was trapped in the part of the Fade she believed she’d heard scholars call “The Deadly Boring.” Nothing but green sky, dark rocks, and the strange sea for – ever, maybe. 

“Ugh,” she shuddered. That was an awful thought. An eternity of greenish-blackish tedium. Why couldn’t the tedium at least be covered in iridescent rainbows, like when they’d eaten the funny mushrooms Isabela had produced from somewhere? They’d had such a nice time.   

She thought back on that evening, remembering Merrill’s sudden fascination with the texture and weight of Fenris’ hair – it had been the only time the two of them had ever really managed to get on – and mused on whether or not she could simply magic up some of those mushrooms from raw Fade when she saw something that wasn’t greenish-blackish or tedious. 

Along the beach, at a distance that could have been half a mile had standard measurement any meaning in the Fade, was a building. It looked for all the world like the platonic ideal of a lovely little seaside tavern. 

With hope in her heart and her staff in her hand (she was hopeful, not stupid, thank you), Hawke opened the door of the tavern and stepped in.  

 

The common room was empty. She was taken aback by this – if buildings in the fade were supposed to be memories of the waking world, wouldn’t spirits have congregated to the memory of a bustling tavern common room, full of drink and laughter and song and general boisterousness? Perhaps it was the memory of a terrible tavern, or one that had just been built. 

Still, it was comfortably appointed, casks and bottles well-stocked behind a gleaming bar, fire in the hearths, stairs at the back that she assumed led to bedrooms, and real glass windows leading out to an open patio. The view past the patio was of a Fade-conjured version of the real sea, even, lovely stormy blues and greys and aquamarines, not a hint of sickly blackish green anywhere. 

“Hello? Anyone home?” Getting no response, she added “nobody home but us demon chickens, I suppose” and wandered in the direction of the patio. As she drew closer to the doors she noted a figure on the patio and walked a bit more cautiously, keenly aware of the staff in her hands.  

She pressed on, and her eart caught a murmur of music. A third figure, squat and low to the ground coalesced and – was that a  _ mabari?  _ Were there mabari spirits? She would need to inform the Chantry immediately upon her return that mabari spirits were solely a positive influence upon the world and must be trusted in all cases. 

Hawke looked up from the mabari thought-form and into her own face. The other Hawke didn’t react, so Hawke reasoned that she was the only one gawking at her double at the moment. 

Other than a strangely ageless quality to the other woman’s face, the differences were few. The other Hawke did not carry a staff or wear robes, but in all other physical aspects they appeared much the same. She was playing a lute quite skillfully, which was not something Hawke had the foggiest idea of how to do.

Hawke was trying to get her head around this when a third figure solidified into the form of a human man who was familiar in the way that a small but precious detail of a loved one can make you inordinately fond of a stranger. It was, she decided, the blunt features, the broad nose, the warm brown eyes, the scatter of freckles that made her feel suddenly fond of this man. 

The spirits spoke. “Can I get you anything else, your ladyship?” 

“That’s very kind of you, guardsman,” replied the Other Hawke, setting aside her lute. At that moment, Hawke began to understand. 

She didn’t know what exactly this was, but she had read  _ Hard in Hightown _ after promising Varric she had no interest in reading any of his books that weren’t explicitly stated to be about her. She knew that Marielle had black hair and blue eyes, and that Varric had described Donnen as a man “composed entirely of different shades of faded brown,” which, now that Donnen was in front of her own eyes, Hawke realised was an excellent piece of authorial sleight of hand. 

She left the patio, unwilling to intrude on what seemed like a private moment. She was halfway up the stairs to the guest rooms before she realised that she could make no sense of this. 

How did this tavern get here? She hadn’t been thinking of taverns, or  _ Hard in Hightown _ , or even, she if she had to admit it, of Varric to any unusual degree. She didn’t remember a seaside inn from Varric’s book, or Donnen waiting on Lady Marielle like this. It had been years since she’d read it, though. Perhaps he’d put out a sequel, and some over fond fan had found a piece of it that spoke to her so clearly and so well that she’d shaped a little corner of the Fade as a consequence. If so, that was sweet, and Hawke was touched that Varric had such devoted readers. 

Hawke mused on these things as she opened the guestroom door, appreciating the way the room oscillated between open and breezy, warm and cozy, and had at different glances a tall white featherbed, an overstuffed mattress covered in richly coloured blankets, a low stone table and chairs, and a heavy desk by the window. Less fixed here, which meant that Hawke could amuse herself by setting it to right before taking a nap, if that were even possible, in the literal room of her dreams. 

That’s when she noticed it, of course. Next to one of the windows – or was it another door, or a fireplace? – was an Eluvian. She’d passed other Eluvians in the raw Fade after she’d come in, but those were shuttered, warped and dark in their frames. This one was different, somehow. Appealing. 

The frame was simple and strong, and the glass was uncracked. A honey-coloured glow emanated from it, with glimpses of a pale, bright sky beyond. A light breeze and the smell of old paper drifted through. Wherever this Eluvian connected to, it seemed harmless and pleasant enough. 

Hawke ran her hand along the frame, marvelling at its enduring craftsmanship. She tried not to think that Merrill’s Eluvian was both a miracle and a complete disaster next to this thing. The glow from the mirror grew stronger, and she heard something that sounded like voices from two floors away. No words, just a slight buzzing murmur with the hint of a recognizable cadence.

She’d snagged a bottle from behind the bar before coming upstairs, and opened it now, taking a fortifying gulp before putting the bottle on the bed. Hawke tapped on the frame once, twice, and the glass shimmered and rippled like good brandy on its way to the glass. 

 

Hawke reaches out, and steps. 


	10. Chapter 10

The walk back through the Shattered Library and the floating islands is quiet, Varric’s stomping aside. The Inquisitor had eventually decided that they wouldn’t find Viddasala today and it wasn’t worth endangering themselves any further than necessary. Time was tight, but not so much that she was willing to risk needless loss.

They’re on a stone path next to a twisted tree that Varric almost recognizes, walking past an Eluvian that is completely indistinguishable from the other dozen he’s seen today. He’s learned that the light in the Crossroads is always pale but bright, and it steadies him to know that they’ll be able to see the path back to the Winter Palace. He’s calmed over the course of the walk back. He considers visiting the inn on the palace grounds that the Chargers had taken over this evening, when they’re back in reality. He wonders if he could provoke Bran into a drinking contest if he said it was for the honour of Kirkwall.

“Varric,” Cole asks suddenly. “Why did the one get away?”

“Kid, I really don’t think we’re ready for riddles yet. Especially not that kind of riddle, at least not until you graduate from knock-knock jokes.”

“Oh,” says Cole. “I think I know a new knock-knock joke.”

“Yeah? Lay it on us, funny man.” Varric catches Cassandra smiling back at them. He really can’t believe that this terrifying woman is his friend. Then he thinks about his friends, which are composed of a very high percentage of terrifying women. He’d once thought his type was curvy blonde dwarva. Then he realized that his type was, entirely, Marian Hawke. He begins to suspect that his type – in friends, in lovers, in ones that get away - is anyone who puts the fear of the Maker into him while still having his back.

He wonders if anyone has ever romanced the Seeker, and then considers throwing himself into the great glowing nothing that floats between the paths of the Crossroads.  

“Knock knock,” says Cole.

“Who’s there?”

“Knock knock!” Cole laughs at his own joke.

“Oof. Try again, Kid. Almost there.” Cole is quiet.

They walk a little further down the floating stone path, another twisted tree, another Eluvian. “Knock knock,” says Cole.

“Okay, I’ll bite. Again. Who’s there?”

“A sudden sound, a sundering soldered, rapping then ringing. _Varric?_ ”

“ _Varric?”_ says Hawke at just the same time that Cole does, as she trips through the Eluvian and knocks Varric on his ass for the second time that day.

 

Of course she returns to the Winter Palace with them, and they do a halfway decent job of getting her reacquainted with air and light and food. Varric can’t stop looking at her, can’t stop touching her. Dorian and Vivienne help Lavellan and Cole assure everyone that this is really the actual Hawke, stepped back out of the Fade as Lavellan herself once did, and not something else in disguise. Cassandra stares at the two of them with a disgustingly soppy look on her face the entire time, clearly more concerned with a romantic reunion than the risk of demonic possession.

Eventually, they are left alone, even Cole vanishing and staying vanished. Hawke tells him about the tavern by the sea, and Varric shows her the papers that Lavellan had taken with her from the Library. They talk about what it might mean _,_  the words in the Library and the building on the shore of the Fade, the reaching across.

Then they _talk_ , and it’s the easiest thing in any world to reach across to each other, to find each other as vital as the pulse of magic in the Eluvian, and as solid and real as Stone.

  


_“Cassandra,” asks Cole. “Did I tell the joke right?”_

_“No, Cole. That was not a knock-knock joke.” The young man looks disappointed. “But it was much better.”_


End file.
